


I've Forgotten This Before

by leslytherinphoenix



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Donna Noble Post Doctor, Future Fic, Gen, I think this is just like a ton of pain?, POV Donna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-24 06:26:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/936478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslytherinphoenix/pseuds/leslytherinphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Donna Noble feels like there’s something in the back of her head that she can’t quite remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've Forgotten This Before

                 _I was gonna be with you. Forever._

Sometimes, Donna Noble feels like there’s something in the back of her head that she can’t quite remember.

Perhaps it’s an old address, perhaps she is finally forgetting her father’s voice or what her mother used to be like when she was a young child. Perhaps she’s losing her spark, her ‘bite,’ something. But she can’t quite put her finger on it.

She winces every time she sees a shadow.

And the next time she’s in a library (It’s Shaun’s idea, not hers) there’s a rack of books, with a sign that says FOR SALE, TWENTY CENTS. While he’s looking around—she can’t help but complain that this library seems awfully _small—_ she drifts over to the rack, her fingers absentmindedly skimming the spines of the books. She pulls one off the shelf. Agatha Christie. Donna’s heart stutters a few times, but recovers. There’s nothing unusual about this. She’s read Agatha Christie before.

Than what the hell is so different about this time?

A group of girls in the back break out in laughter, throwing their heads back and cackling like a bunch of hens. Donna rolls her eyes, and a librarian shushes them. “Quiet, please,” her voice is annoyed and amused, and the girls fall silent.

 _Silence in the library._ Donna gets chills and she closes her eyes, trying to calm the headache that threatens to burst out from beneath her temples. She takes a deep breath.

_Count the shadows. A police box. Flickering lights, a skeleton in a spacesuit. A footprint on the beach, the tide coming in.  Don’t tell the others, they’ll only laugh. Don’t tell the others, they’ll only—The Doctor. I saw the Doctor._

_And then you forgot._

She shakes her head and looks at the book in her hand, at the worn cover. There’s a large wasp on it, a gigantic one. She blinks a few times. Something in her stirs.

“What’s that?” Shaun’s there, all of a sudden, and he has a small stack of books tucked under his arm. He tries to look at the book she’s holding.

“It’s nothing,” Donna replies. She puts the book back.

 

“Stop it,” Donna says.

“Stop it!”

“Stop copying me.” She rolls her eyes and swats her friend on the head.

“Stop copying me.”

The color drains from her face, and something tugs at her mind. She’s trying so hard to get a grasp on it—so, so _very hard,_ but she just can’t. It’s slipping just out of reach, like sand running through her fingers, time running through cracks in the universe.

“Donna?” The copying game is over now, but Donna’s still pale, her eyes unfocused—or perhaps just focusing on something that no one can see. “Donna, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Donna replies, but her mind is elsewhere.

_Molto bene. Allons-y._

Her dreams are plagued by evil geniuses, by a box flying through the sky, by all of space and time. They’re full of worlds that she will never see, people she will never meet, people that sing her name and praise her as the most important women in all of creation.

Her dreams are filled with a man, an important man, someone who helps people, especially, _especially_ her. He saves people through time, he runs through the universe with a jacket and a sad, lonely smile on his face.

The savior of worlds. The healer. Donna dreams of a doctor.

And sometimes, she wakes up in the middle of the night, and there are tears running down her face. There’s a headache pounding at her temples, thundering, crashing, worse than the worst migraine she’s ever had. She doesn’t know why. There’s something pounding against a wall in her brain, trying to make it crash down, down, down, and part of her wants it to, part of her wants the torrential flood of something to just wash over everything.

Maybe it’d be better that way.

 

She insists on pockets in her wedding dress but doesn’t know why.

 

She winces at angel statues, stiffens whenever she passes a police box. She finds screwdrivers strange, and constantly asks herself why she flinches everytime she hears the word ‘exterminate,’ because she always does. Beetles, which have never disturbed her before, send her into shaking fits.

Donna Noble doesn’t understand. It feels like a giant chunk is _missing,_ it’s all missing, it’s just gone and she can feel the hole but she doesn’t know what to fill it with.

And through it all, there’s just this giant battering ram in her head, crashing, crashing against it, and she doesn’t know how to stop it for the life of her.

 

She stops at an ancient Rome exhibit downtown and takes a bit more time than usual to look through it, flitting past the information and looking at the relics.

There’s a Pompeii section there, with the bodies made out of dust. She pauses a bit longer than she would’ve at some of them, and there’s a sinking feeling in her stomach when she sees the hollow shell of what must’ve been a little boy.

And then there’s a marble plate, with a telephone box, and a man, and a woman, and Donna goes pale and she staggers backward, leaning on one of those fake-columns for support.

“Miss?” A security guard approaches her. “Are you alright?”

“Where’s that thing from?” Donna asks rudely and motions to the marble plate. “What’s that thing, where’ve you got it from?”

The security guard motions to the little information card next to it but Donna simply turns and leaves.

 

She’s wary of dieting. Even though her mother insists—and insists, and insists, and insists—she can’t bring herself to try the new pills, the newest formula.

She won’t.

 

“What’s that on your back?” Shaun asks, and Donna reacts almost violently, she swats his hand away, she whips around.

“What do you bloody mean, there isn’t anything there,” she hisses, and he shrinks back.

“Bloody hell, calm down," he says and motions for her to turn around. "Just a bit of fuzz." He picks it off.

Donna spends ten minutes that evening staring at her back in the mirror.

 

And, when given the chance, she always turns left. 

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first time posting anything on this site and I have no idea how this works but I hope y'all enjoy~


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